Jaxon Bridge

This is a remarkable thing to hear. I didn't know the human eye could register color temperature. You're saying that as a light dims, you can also see the warming of its tone towards orange, even though you are using no gels? I'd think the vast majority of people only notice the obvious, that the light output was diminishing. I guess if I had more lighting experience, I'd perhaps see this was a silly question. But I am truly astonished. Are you one of those guys on that show, Heroes? :huh:

This might be a really silly questions but how do you eyeball color temperature?

These are all great ideas; i'm very happy with the responses, thank you!

Michael - do you use the CTO when dimming, or only when you are not dimming (ie using a shadowmaker box, for example)?

In other words, the Kelvin temperature decreases? Warmer, in terms of temperature, usually means an increase (ie "the temperature outside is warmer today than yesterday"), but perhaps when discussing color temperature, it means a move to a warmer appearance, but actually a decrease in CT, right?

Shadowmaker looks great; and just a plain old dimmer too when you need one without the flicker, I see. Question about dimming and color temperature: is the CTO still necessary with a flicker box? When light is dimmed, how does this effect color temperature?

great idea! i wonder what color gel i should get or if it would be necessary to mix colors on different lights. i'm thinking two sources each bounced into their own flex-fill. maybe two different shades of orange? i wish i could light a fire to analyze!

I am planning a scene in a burning apartment. We don't actually see the fire (because I don't have the money), but I plan to simulate it by showing orange flickering light on the walls. I am thinking about the best way to do this. My initial guess is to use orange gel over the lights, and have people wave things in front of the lights. Also a smoke machine, I'm thinking. I would think this might be difficult to pull off. Anyone tried this or have some more specific advice how to accomplish it? -jaxon

and how long was a typical crank? i'd imagine it varied depending on slow motion, etc intentions.

they have the stuff playing on large widescreen LCDs, so clearly in video format, i.e. ~30fps. i just thought it looked cool, and would be fun to experiment with alternate shooting rates. however, i was not looking at comedies. almost looked more like documentary footage, not even narrative.

I wonder if some of the stuff I saw was less than this. I should go back and look at the films' titles and look it up. Some looked quite choppy, but it was an interesting aesthetic when placed against the NYC settings of 100 years ago. It looked more removed from 24 fps than I would think 16 fps looks.

I just chanced upon the inspiring and excellent Turner Classic Movies display in Grand Central Station here in NYC, where they are chronicling the history of NYC cinematography, both on-location and in recreated sets, and it features numerous backdrops and photos taken from productions, and also has several simultaneous screenings of NYC footage dating back 100 years. Very interesting, and free! My question is that the very old footage looks choppy from a frame rate standpoint (actually I like it), and I'm wondering what kind of frame rates people were shooting at back in the early days. I know there was wide variation but I'm wondering how low the rates got.

i certainly wouldn't say "easy" when talking about reversal stocks. in other thread Mr. Mullen pointed out that even he has difficulty exposing Tri-X sometimes. not to single anyone out. but "easy" is a word i'd be more inclined to use for negative stocks. i shot on reversal stocks about 10 years ago at film school in new york. half the students in my class of 25 or so consistently had exposure problems on plus-x and tri-x, even after a few months of experience. it's not really that easy.

I wonder if the new Tri-X is as grainy as the old one, or if it has come to resemble Plus-X more. Or god forbid that Plus-X has come to resemble Tri-X. I hope that when it become twice as sensitive (ASA-wise), it didn't sacrifice the beautiful grain structure. Is it safe to say that Plus-X is still the ultra-sharp fine grained stock it once was? The Kodak site also says that Tri-X has "increased sharpness" but I doubt it's anything like Plus-X.

but the stock has evolved since then, right? i know just a couple years ago, maybe 2004 or so, its chemistry changed as did its ASA rating. perhaps it has changed more than once in its history?

i have read on here that Tri-X is one of hte most challenging stocks to expose properly and consistently. i am wondering how "easy" it is to expose Plus-X. i understand neither of these is as easy as negative film, but with Plus-X you get one of the sharpest grains of any stock ever made. the compromise is you lose one stop of sensitivity, but is it near as hard to expose as Tri-X? also - i thought read once that these stocks would be made available for the Aaton A Minima, but i do not see them listed on Kodak's site. anyone know about this?

That's what I thought. Thanks for clearing it up!

I had a fellow tell me recently: It is not an unusual practice to shoot an 1:1.85 film with anamorphic lenses to get a better image resolution: it's a gain of about 50% more vertical resolution. This really surprised me. While I recently noticed that the 1.85:1 movie Babel had anamorphic scenes due to a multi-format production, I can't imagine there are actually too many movies shooting Scope for 1.85:1 distribution. Can anyone name a few? This guy is in Berlin, and I know European formats do differ somewhat. Jaxon

ah very nice. land of the free.

I know; i'm sorry, i was being tongue-in-cheek.

Does this imply you are shooting at 1:1 ratio? Is that even possible? I'd expect to shoot nearly an hour of footage for a 10 minute short, or at least 4:1. More power to you if you can do it in less.

I always get my film back within 1 hour at Wal-Mart. In fact, it is what they advertise and usually they keep to it. One time, though, it took two and a half hours. It was okay, because I had a lot of extra shopping to do that day anyway, and it is convenient because the rest of the Wal-Mart merchandise is in the same building, so I didn't get that upset. It actually might have been closer to three hours, but I wasn't counting. I wish I had, though, so I could give a more accurate account of the experience right here. But it was somewhere between two and a half and three hours wait time that day. But most times, it is within 1 hour. Hope this helps.

Is this is standard service? What is the resolution and format of the video stored on the hard drive? Is this pretty expensive? -Jaxon

Never say never my friend.

I'm not an expert on post-production processes which I believe are the issue at stake with your question, but I can offer some basics. Just because you shoot on 35mm doesn't mean it's going to look good after a transfer. There are a huge variety of processes to get a high-resolution video product out of a film negative. As an extreme example, suppose you took a 35mm movie but first transferred it to a low-resolution digital file for web viewing. Then you decided to make a DVD from the web version. It would look awful. Likewise, a low-budget production may not be able to afford the costs of creating a high-res master from which to dupe videos or compress the MPG for DVD. Resolution aside, there are also lots of coloring and other issues (which I'm mostly ignorant of) that affect how clean a video product looks. Compare a professional TV show shot on 16mm to a student film also shot on 16mm and then transferred to DVD. You might get a similar discrepancy. p.s. -- "Anamorophic".. this forum's rules require that your display name not be a nickname, but a full first and last name. Please change it if you'd like your posts taken seriously.